SE Michigan Investor Newbie

[Brian H.]

Hello everyone!

My name is Brian and I am 35 year old software engineer and a small business owner. I live in Michigan (Wayne county) and I am interested in investing in Michigan but am not limiting myself to it. I am new to real estate but eager to get my feet wet and absorb all the knowledge I can. 

My interest in RE started out when I was paying too much to rent an apartment and all my friends around me started to buy houses. They explained to me that I was wasting money on rent (subjective) when I could just spend a little bit more monthly and have the majority of my money going towards equity of a house. A year later I bought a house, perhaps a house that is too large for a single guy like me (4 BR 3 bath). It was hard for me to find something that was cheap enough and was only a 2 BR, so when I came across my current house the built-in deck hot tub and fully furnished basement with a wet bar drew me in! I figured it would be easy to sell this house down the road as it's a great family house and I can still afford it.

Over the years people would always comment about how it's a lot of house for me, especially considering I almost never go in the basement (1500 sqft of livable space unused). I decided that rather than sell it makes more sense for me to downgrade to a smaller house and to rent this one out. That began my journey to research about real estate and being a landlord, to how to became a RE investor and eventually landing up at BP!

All my retirements are where I want them to be and I decided that with all my extra capital that I would play the stock market over losing it to inflation in a bank. The market was great pre-covid, but since then I consider the whole idea a little bit too unpredictable. I am the type of person to obsessively research and perhaps overanalyze (which has its upsides and downsides) but I think real estate investing seems better for me personally. I like to vet out and feel confidence in where I put my money, and if I lose it'll be because I took the risk and trusted in an idea/person over an entity whose value can drop suddenly for no real good reason (such as a tweet).

I am interested in becoming a RE investor leaning towards hands-off approach as I stay busy with my day job and small business. I hope to learn a lot in the coming months!

Pleasure to meet you all 😊